/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// IOT DECK: A DIGITAL CARD-BASED IDEATION GAME TO INSPIRE INTERNET OF THINGS DESIGN Yen Hao, Chen / Rung Huei, Liang / Cheng Dar, Chiang National Taiwan University of Science and Technology [email protected] ABSTRACT As the technology grows rapidly, exploring the Internet has become a common activity in our daily lives. We can expect a future image of an every daily object connecting itself to the Internet. By the development of RFID, Wireless and Mobile network technology, designers can start to consider how Internet of things (IoT) can support our lives in various scenarios. Our aim is to design an idea generation technique that creates special IoT ideas which could be utilized within the industry. The IoT deck was created to convey 20 aspects of a framework of Internet of Things to designers. The normal cards are physical cards, while the digital cards apply Augmented Reality technique with a digital table. In the case studies we have found that two techniques offering different types of inspiration, and the digital technique had improved the process of building the mood board and expanded the interaction within the design groups. Keywords: Internet of Things, Brainstorming, Card Game. INTRODUCTION As Mark Weiser argues in his study, in the future we will be surrounded by a huge amount of computational objects, and many of them will vanish into the background. Professor Hiroshi Ishii also notes that the future interaction will be tangible interaction, since atoms and bits will be combined seamlessly. This allows us to interact with the virtual world by using proper physical objects. By the improvement of technology, we can imagine a sketch in which everything connects itself to the Internet. When it happens, the world around us would change hugely. As objects interact with other objects through the Internet, the environment would be more user-friendly, and tackle the unsolved problems as well. On the other hand, Idea generation games have been widely used in different realms of design, which spur the development of innovative products and services. Similar to a brainstorming process, idea generation games provide stimulation in the ideation phase of design process. A couple of studies include various physical materials in idea generation phase, and find them useful for facilitating interaction between participants and motivating idea generation. One advantage of game play in design process is that it accelerates a creative process, which encourages participants to share odd ideas. On the other hand, game rules can successfully guide the discussion to specific goals. Brandt and Messeter found the notion of games useful as a framework for design activities through their research. They indicate that the main usage of a game is to engage workers in a change process where they can create a common language, discuss existing reality and investigate future visions. While designers are required to be creative on demand, a successful creative process requires a relaxed and playful atmosphere. We choose card as the material of the ideation game. Due to the simplicity and variability, several designers and companies had brought card games into their product design process. Diversity and unity: Proceedings of IASDR2011, the 4th World Conference on Design Research, 31 October - 4 November, Delft, the Netherlands. Edited by N.F.M. Roozenburg, L.L. Chen & P.J. Stappers. DIVERSITY AND UNITY Internet of Things (IoT) is a new concept that will bring a huge impact into our lives and change the way we interact with people and objects. We introduce a technique that helps designers and other stakeholders consider designing products and people's behavior is important, but as yet little in the way of a guide for designers and other stakeholders, bringing together knowledge and examples from different disciplines, and drawing parallels which can allow concepts to be usefully transposed. The DwI services with IoT properties. We had designed a card deck which includes 20 aspects of human needs and claim that employ digital technology into brainstorming technique may offer an interesting environment and enhance the interaction within design groups. Deck is composed of 8 lens which group the 101 cards according to different kinds of disciplinary 'worldview' or fields of research. The original idea was that an architect might approach influencing behavior by instinctively proposing ideas from the Architectural lens, an ergonomist by using ideas from Errorproofing, and so on. BACKGROUND Golembewski and Selby designed the Ideation decks composed of several categories such as Technologies, Emotions, and Rooms in the House. Each category includes some Instance Cards. Participants choose 3 We will now discuss several card decks that have been created for two purposes: for inspiration in design and as design games. categories and in each category pick 3 Instance cards to form a 3x3 grid of cards, each column and row includes all the categories. Then participants select the combinations of their interest and ideating. They found that the random nature of the combinations allows potentially surprising combinations of project INSPIRATION DESIGN CARDS Several designers and researchers have created a type of cards with main purpose of providing inspiration in user-centered design activities. The property of this kind of cards is that each card could be used separately. There are no defined rules so that participants could use cards in the way they want, for example, choosing one to three cards each time and starting ideation with the tips and pictures on the cards. aspects to surface. Mobile game company SCVNGR also designed the Game Mechanics Playdeck, which supports the employees brainstorming with 47 game design keywords (e.g. Achievement, Countdown). Halskov and Dalsgaard‟s Inspiration Cards consist of two sets of cards (Domain Cards show the pictures collected from field study, Technology Cards show the applications of technology) that are used by designers and other stakeholders at the start of the design process to generate ideas collaboratively. Brandt and Messeter have developed a game that involves 4 sub-games with several types of cards: Moment Cards, Sign Cards and Trace Cards. The IDEO Cards consist of a deck of 51 cards, each showing a different method used by IDEO to keep people at the center of the design process. This inspires creativity by inviting designers to try out and develop different Figure 1. Design with Intent toolkit DESIGN-GAME CARDS The second group of card sets has been created as part of design games to support idea generation activities. The design games include rules, which guide the players with a specific goal. The limitations usually force players to consider different strategies and thus inspire some creative concepts. approaches when designing. Lockton's Design with Intent toolkit tries to bring a new sight toward designing products that influence Kultima et al argue that idea generation games can be successful devices for creative work of game designers. The Game-based idea generation user‟s behavior. He deems that there is a huge opportunity for design for behavior change to address social and environmental issues where 2 PRODEEDINGS IASDR2011 techniques provide an easily facilitated, focused but playful setting for coming up with new ideas. They claim that game play can bring into creative processes which require a relaxed and favorable atmosphere. Järvinen‟s GameGame also lets players material differently. They used cards to make video clips tangible, and made cards with single words printed (so called “sign-cards”), constituting a conceptual framework for the activities of the design process. From the use of the tangible objects as compete in designing games. Players collect and trade cards in order to create a complete game design. In between, one player gets to play a game publisher, while the other players try to sell their game concepts to her. In the end, the best game design is decided in a vote. The game rules bring components of design games, they had made the observation that cards support different stakeholders in making design moves on a conceptual level. positive effects which set a specific goal and make the process go smoothly. The winning condition also encourages players to try their best. Cards to provide inspiration to designers while designing for playfulness. Some of which seem evident in play activities (e.g. „Challenge‟, „Competition‟), while others may seem surprising in this context (e.g. „Cruelty‟, „Suffering‟). Lucero and Arrasvuori designed PLEX Cards, a deck supporting design for playfulness. They set 22 PLEX With the property of randomness and playfulness, card has become the most popular choice among these physical materials. However, most of the ideation games use cards as the only material in their games. Although cards are easy to manipulate and can be produced rapidly, there still are some limitations such as the static content and failing to change the content of each card while playing. We employ augmented reality technique, combining the physical property of a card and the virtual property of digital technology, and suggest that the combination of physical and digital materials make Figure 2. An example of GameGame card CHARACTER OF CARD According to Hornecker‟s study, choosing cards as a design tool initiates the discussion and leaves it open to how to relate to them. She observed that cards can be used as orienting devices and conversation starter, which help a group orient towards the themes described on them and provide a physical focus while having a low entry threshold. On the other hand, the physical as well as configurable the ideation game more powerful. THE IOT DECK Cards, as an ideation tool, may make design groups focus on the subjects, and the randomness brings stimulation to participants as well. On the other hand, cards are easy to manipulate such as shuffling, drawing and sorting. For these properties, we decided to choose a card as the discussing material. nature of a card is one of its strengths. Participants can move, arrange, shuffle, sort, and toss away the cards, which make the discussion more interactive and intuitive. Physiological needs Display Condition Brandt and Messeter argue that game pieces used in the design games allow stakeholders to become more fluent in the language of expressing design moves. Having objects at hand to play with is important as it speeds up the process and helps participants to focus. Random Identification The game pieces function both as grounding for the design work and as boundary objects allowing different participants to read and interpret the Tangible Interface What if an object informs us about its condition? What if an object pushes something we like randomly? What if an object identifies every different user? What if we can manipulate the virtual world through a physical object? Search What if it can search the information we 3 DIVERSITY AND UNITY needs and Self-actualization category (Green) related to the self-actualization needs. In normal cards, the front side includes a main topic and two pictures, while the back is description and examples. In digital cards, the front side includes a main topic want automatically? Information What if an object publishes its state to Publish the world? Daily Tasks Data Recording What if an object can handle the daily works for us? and description, while the back is a digital tag. A tag could be recognized by a webcam and the corresponding pictures would be projected onto the desk, around which the design group discuss together. What if an object records our life automatically? Emotion needs What if a pair of objects is designed such Emotion Medium that one would express when the other is used? Sensible Object What if an object has perception? Personified Object What if an object behaves like human? People States What if an object may inform us states of others? Interaction needs Interaction What if we can interact with others Medium through an object? Current States Delay Messages What if an object tells others about what Figure 3. Normal IoT Cards (Front and Back) we are doing now? What if we can send a message to the future? Interact with What if an object can interact with other others objects itself? Self-actualization needs Reward What if an object gives me feedback when I achieve some goal? Reminder What if an object reminds us? Prediction Inform What if an object predicts what we want to do and does it before us? Figure 4. Digital IoT Cards (Front and Back) What if an object tells us our body condition like a personal housekeeper? THE DIGITAL TABLE Table 1. The topics and descriptions of the IoT deck. The digital technology allows the contents of cards display through projection so that it can show more The IoT Deck includes 4 categories of a framework of Internet of Things for designers and other stakeholders who wish to design future products. For the concept of Internet of Things is a new trend of the future, we try to design a deck of introducing what objects can do when connecting itself to the Internet. Through reviewing the research from books, and bigger pictures on the table, or include multiple media at the same time (e.g., sound, video). On the other hand, as the contents of cards are digital data, they can be modified and updated for new inspiration within a few seconds. In a typical brainstorming process, building mood board is an important part when discussing the concept of design. Participants look through a large number of images quickly and choose the images they are interested with and share their ideas with others. By using Digital Table, this papers and speeches, we had chosen 20 characters of the Internet of Things. According to Maslow‟s needhierarchy theory, we separate the cards into 4 groups (categories): Physiological category (Yellow) process can be faster and more efficient, which is the most important feature of this implement. related to the physiological needs, Emotion category(Red) related to the belonging needs, Interaction category(Blue) related to the esteem 4 PRODEEDINGS IASDR2011 one participant described that object may inform others when accidents happens. Another participant then chose Interact with others and described that if pen cases can interact with each other through light or sound, we can know if our friend is working or at his position now. In this session the group had chosen Current states, Inform, Delay messages, Reward, Identification, Reminder, Interact with others, Tangible interface and Interaction medium for ideation. Figure 5. The component of Digital Table Figure 6. The scenario of using Digital Table Figure 7.Using Normal cards for brainstorming CASES We applied our techniques in four cases, each group used both normal cards and digital cards, with different order and subjects. With observing the usage of different types of cards, we try to investigate the interaction between participants and CASE STUDY 1- USING DIGITAL CARDS the concepts made with these two techniques. We chose two scenario subjects “Play” and “Caring” in order to expand the discussion in the cases. With 3 participants in each group and 30 minutes for each brainstorming session, we will discuss the processes and result concepts as follows. digital tables. With the digital table, participants can watch bigger images and change them with ease. One participant then suggested placing all the cards on the table with back-side up and matching two cards in random to ideate with. For there is no image on a digital card, this action made the discussion After a period of time, the group used the digital cards for brainstorming with the subject “Play”. They started with Interaction medium to share an idea that elders can play chess through connected more fun and inspirational. They drew Daily Tasks and Information Publish, looking at the image showed on the table and having a conversation for the images shown on the table. The participants copied the images to the copy area and changed them frequently. We found that when using the digital table, participants always brainstorm with only images instead of reading information on the cards, for the bigger images are CASE STUDY 1- USING NORMAL CARDS In this session the group used normal cards first, with the brainstorming subject “Caring”. The group started with drawing cards and drawing mind map to write down some concepts correlated with Caring. Usually they drew one or two cards a time, and spoke the information of card out to others, and then every participant shared her ideas by turns. The group started discussing caring of elders and children that we may want to know their current position and their body condition. Inform had been chosen and more attractive to them. In this session the group had chosen Interaction Medium, Daily Tasks, 5 DIVERSITY AND UNITY Information Publish, Reward and Identification for ideation. CASE STUDY 2- USING NORMAL CARDS After a period of time, the group used the normal cards for brainstorming with the subject “Caring”. In this session, the group chose to draw three cards at a time for discussion. By this they can focus on the same topics and build new ideas on others‟ concepts. First they chose Search for brainstorming, thinking about if an object can search needs and match with the people who can handle nearby. Another participant then combined this idea with Reward that users who help others will get some points and get badges to encourage them. Later, one chose Data Record and shared her idea that the object would record the actions we do every day so that when we one day forget about something it can remind us what we may forget to do. Figure 8. Using Digital cards with the digital table Drawing cards facilitated the group to ideate in a fun and challenge atmosphere. The Search, Reward, Data Record, Delay Messages were chosen to discuss in this session. CASE STUDY 2- USING DIGITAL CARDS In this session, the group used digital cards first with the brainstorming subject “Play”. This group looked for the images of Personified Object and Sensible Object for brainstorming. They then built a concept of changing the weather information into an expression. An object may act like an animal, sweating when the weather is hot or shaking when it‟s cold. One participant then chose the images of Search and Reward to consider about study. After finish reading one book, the reader can rate the book and get some reward or comment. The same book owned by other readers would show how others rate this book and what comments they leave so that it can encourage them to read more. Figure 10. Juxtaposing three cards for brainstorming CASE STUDY 3- USING DIGITAL CARDS In this session the group used digital cards and the subject “Caring” for ideation. After viewing some images shown on the table, one participant chose The digital table improved interaction and discussion between participants. They deemed that bigger images and manipulation of the table provided more stimulation for brainstorming. In this session the group had chosen Personified Object, Sensible Object, Search and Reward for ideation. Predict to share his idea. If objects may know some accident happened to us, then they can take some actions themselves immediately to save our lives. Another participant then shared a concept with Daily Tasks, which our friends can see what we are dressing though linked mirrors in their home and give some suggestions to us. When using the digital cards, each participant would choose the images they like and made a copy in the copy area, and then discussed a concept with these three images combined. In this session, the group Figure 9.Using Digital cards for brainstorming 6 PRODEEDINGS IASDR2011 applied Interact With Others, Prediction, Inform, Daily Tasks and Reward for brainstorming. may give him a hand to transport it and get some virtual points or items. In this session one participant just used Search to form concepts with sketching a mind map. Interact With Others, Reward, Search, Information Publish and Identification were chosen for ideation. CASE STUDY 4- USING DIGITAL CARDS In following, the group used digital cards for brainstorming with the subject “Caring”. One started with Emotion Medium to think about a couple of cups that would interact with the users. In case if someone catches a cold, his friends can remind him to drink water through the cups remotely. Another concept formed with one image shown with Identification, wherein the cups would know the Figure 11. Spreading cards on the digital table CASE STUDY 3- USING NORMAL CARDS When using the normal cards, the group spread all the cards on table and looking for the topics or images and started ideating. Search was chosen to form a concept that some sports or games require multiple participants to play with, if objects can automatically match the players then they may search other players with ease. preference of temperature and sweetness of their owners. One participant then shared her idea from Random Another participant chose Display Condition and thought about when we want to know the weather we usually look outside or listen to the rain drops and Reward, a social game implemented with mobile app that friends would randomly receive a mission simultaneously. The mission would be to leave for somewhere and do something. By cooperating with friends to achieve the mission, each player can get some reward and improve their friendships. Random, intuitively. If there is a device formed like a window and it shows information such as weather, temperature, traffic or others, then users can use it whenever they want to know the information, otherwise the information goes to the background without bothering us. Reward, Search, Data Record were chosen In this session. When using the digital table, each user can see images of others put on the table. This improved interaction between participants. In the session the participants changed the images frequently to get stimulation and inspiration. Emotion Medium, CASE STUDY 4- USING NORMAL CARDS The group used normal cards first with the brainstorming subject “Play”. As the beginning of discussion, one participant applied Interact with others to think about toys can communicate with other toys so that they can have some interesting interactions. Another participant then form a concept within which each object forms like a brick, having different functions, and users can compose different types of objects together to build their own personal device. Interaction Medium, Identification, Remind, Inform and Search were chosen for ideation in this session. RESULTS AND FINDINGS Categories Another concept combined with virtual reward and real mission, which players can get some game rewards from real world actions. Like crowd sourcing, if someone wants to send something, other players 7 Group1 Group2 Caring Play Caring Play Physiological 2 3 2 1 Emotion 0 0 0 2 Interaction 4 1 1 0 Self-actualization 3 1 1 1 Total 9 5 4 4 DIVERSITY AND UNITY Categories Group3 using digital cards, I would like to watch the pictures. When using the normal cards, I would like to read the topic and descriptions to get the idea of the cards.” Participant #2: “I think there are two different ways between the two techniques, the Group4 Caring Play Caring Play Physiological 1 3 2 3 Emotion 0 0 1 0 Interaction 1 0 1 1 Self-actualization 3 1 2 1 Total 5 4 6 5 digital cards let me use my imagination, while the normal cards carry more information for me to think about.” The words show a way to follow with thinking about an object with IoT functions, while pictures discard the clues and try to make participants brainstorm with their own experiences Table 2. The number of chosen cards of the four cases. This table shows the similarity of the chosen categories in four cases is high and the amounts of concepts between normal cards and digital cards are of no difference. There is little difference no matter which technique chosen first. In the cases, less cards of emotion category are chosen to form a concept. We deem that the participants might think that the subjects do not match with this type of concept or the emotional features are similar to other features in other categories. or creativity. A NEW WAY OF INSPIRATION When applying technique with digital table, participants prefer to ideate with pictures shown on it discarding the actual meaning of cards. As this situation, the content of picture plays an important role in the brainstorming process. The balance between abstract and concrete of the images should be designed carefully in order to inspire participants without restricting them. Participant #2: “I think the relation between the topic and the pictures is very The numbers of concepts are of no difference for different subjects, indicating that both techniques encourage participants to design Internet of Things product. important because when using the digital card with digital table, we seldom try to understand what the descriptions of the cards are, the pictures may lead us to another way of the original meaning.” For the normal cards, many of the participants thought that the normal card is more manipulative than the SPECIFIC VERSUS ABSTRACT When using digital table, the bigger pictures showing on it attracted the participants more than topics and descriptions showing on the card. Thus they usually ideated with pictures only instead of reading cues from cards. Participant #01: “The bigger images stimulate me more than the information of card, so I chose to ideate with just pictures.” digital cards though the drawback of limited space of physical card. Participant #4: “For me, I like to brainstorm with pictures more than descriptions, but maybe someone would like to brainstorm with descriptions more.” INTERACTION BETWEEN PARTICIPANTS The pictures shown on table provided a wider framework for inspiration that allows participants to The limited number of juxtapose card is 3 due to the big pictures showing on the table. Participant #1: “When using the digital cards, due to the space of table we usually put 3 cards a time. I think this restriction instead helped us focus on the 3 cards without information overloading.” Since the pictures are more attractive than texts, participants usually looked at the picture without reading the card topic and description. On the other hand, digital table also think out of the tips, though the idea may not relate to the original concept of the cards. In normal card sessions, pictures gave less information than the descriptions, and therefore participants prefer to ideate with tips instead of pictures. Participants could combine two or three topics to form a concept with ease, for the texts offered allowed participants to discuss on it together since they could point to something interesting in the pictures and try different matches of cards. On the specific concept while pictures stimulated participants‟ imagination. Participant #3: “When 8 PRODEEDINGS IASDR2011 opposite, participants usually spread all cards on the table to start ideating in normal cards session. Yet too many juxtaposed cards may interfere them with overloaded information, and thus blocked the brainstorming. Through the two cases, we found that the digital cards offered another type of inspiration that is more abstract and more interactive than the normal cards. There is no better choice for the two techniques as the normal cards offer conceptual description while digital cards offer abstract images. Some user may prefer to form a concept with words while others like to start from images. Internet of things is a coming future, which will extend from computers, mobile phones and tablets to daily objects such as cups, clothes, vehicles or environment such as houses and offices. Combined with ubiquitous networks, those objects can form a new sight of world that we may not imagine to be these days, therefore improving human lives. Considering the communication technology, there Figure 12. Using the normal cards for brainstorming are Bluetooth, RFID, wireless, communication network and so on. Designers, on the other hand, can try to articulate how to design connected products by applying these technologies in order to bring convenience and joyfulness to the users. We offer a deck that brings the images of Internet of Things to Figure 13. Using the digital cards for brainstorming designers and other stakeholders, and wish to produce products from various human needs, making a new brainstorming technique reinforce the inspiration and interaction. FACILITATING BUILDING THE MOOD BOARD REFERENCES One feature of the digital table is that participants in the group can build mood board for discussion easily and quickly. Another feature is that it offers a platform for participants to watch bigger images and to store temporary images. Each participant can look through different images by rotating cards for new Weiser, M. (1999). The computer for the 21 st century. SIGMOBILE Mob. Comput. Commun. Rev., 3(3), 3-11. Violet, 2009. Nabaztag. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nabaztag ThinkCube. http://thinkcube.ning.com/ (accessed 5.1.2011) The Art of Game Design. http://artofgamedesign.com/cards/ (accessed 5.1.2011) SCVNGR Game Mechanics Playdeck. http://techcrunch.com/2010/08/25/scvngr-game-mechanics/ (accessed 5.1.2011) stimulation. A bigger image allows whole group to notice it and start sharing their ideas. The mood board is easy to share or save as a digital file for further use. Spencer, D. 2009. Card Sorting: Designing usable Categories. New York. Lucero, A., & Arrasvuori, J. (2010). PLEX Cards: a source of inspiration when designing for playfulness. In Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Fun and Games (pp. 28–37). CONCLUSION Kensing, F. & Madsen, K.H.:Generating Visions: Future Workshops and Metaphors, in Greenbaum, J. & Kyng, M.: Design at Work, Lawrence Earlbaum 1991 (155-168) The overall aim with our ideation game is to provide a technique that informs designers to deliberate how to design IoT products and to evaluate whether the digital technology facilitates the group discussion Kultima, A., Niemelä, J., Paavilainen, J., & Saarenpää, H. (2008). Designing game idea generation games. In Proceedings of the 2008 Conference on Future Play: Research, Play, Share (pp. 137–144). and improves idea generation results. We deem that this interactive ideation game provides inspirations and expands the sight of future of Internet of things. Järvinen, A. 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